Caravaggio: Probing Humanity

Caravaggio - The Cardsharps - c. 1596 - Oil on canvas, 92 x 129 cm - Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, TX (click photo for larger image)

While most other Italian artists of his time slavishly followed the elegant balletic conventions of late Mannerist painting, Caravaggio painted the stories of the Bible as visceral and often bloody dramas. He staged the events of the distant sacred past as if they were taking place in the present day.

Even though he only lived until the age of 39, Caravaggio had a profound influence on the painters around him and on later art movements notably Baroque art and 19th-century Realism. His art also influenced poets, and cinematic artists, including Martin Scorsese.

Caravaggio died at age 38  and was buried in an unmarked grave.

The Cardsharps, lost for almost a century, helps to fill in an important stage in the development of Caravaggio's art. Behind a table that protrudes into the spectator's space, a youthful innocent studies his cards, overlooked by a sinister middle-aged man, whose fingers signal to another, younger scoundrel to his right, who holds a five of hearts behind his back. To the left-hand side of the canvas is the object of their conspiracy, a pile of coins.

It was to have many imitators - within a few years of the painter's death an early variant had been painted by the Franco-Roman Valentin de Boulogne - but few equals. Caravaggio was less melodramatic than many of the artists known as the Caravaggisti who painted in his style, and he suggests only enough of the interaction between the three actors to imply the sequel!